Sail
by Iffy Jr
Summary: Tony/Loki. Random little thing written at midnight, also kind of...sad. But no character death! "Tony likes to paint, and Loki just happens to like his paints. And, maybe, he likes Tony even a little more than that." No smut, just kisses. COMPLETE.


A/N's: Um this is something that I literally just wrote in the last 2 hours, written with the song Sail by AWOLNATION in the background. Because it just wrote it and it took so short and stuff it's not very good, and it doesn't even make any sense, but… I don't know, it's speaking to me. And it's kind of indecisive and I haven't even read through it to edit it yet (so forgive any spelling/grammar mistakes). I don't know it just came to me, okay? It was also inspired by a Drarry picture that I totally wish I could link to you, but I can't find it anywhere. It's Draco standing there, a frame sitting in front of him with Harry in it, and Harry is holding onto the frame like it's just empty and he's standing there. But none of his body is outside of the frame. And…yeah that was indisicive all in itself I think I should go to bed now it's past midnight haha.

Anyway, enjoy, I guess!

Oh and to anyone who read this before and all of the names were just initials, I am so sorry. Like I said, I didn't edit this before I posted it. Sorry!

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**Disclaimer**: None of the characters in this story are mine. They strictly belong to Marvel and whoever else has helped create the Avengers or the characters of Asgard.

**Full Summary**: Tony likes to paint, and some days the ship of his mind gets taken over by the waves, and he just has to give in. And maybe Jarvis' censors being taken out is kind of a good thing, because Loki happens to like Tony's paintings, and he happens to like Tony even more.

**Pairing**: (Main) Tony/Loki, (Mentioned) Clint/Natasha  
**Status**: Complete  
**Rating**: M, simply because I'm terrified this site will take it off if it's wrong and aaah okay just yeah.  
**Warning/Not-warnings**: strong language (but not very much of it) and kisses between two males. That's it. There's no sex or anything, and they don't even kiss till the end. So it's basically just a boring little drabble about painting that I don't even think anybody will like. If you do like it, though, feel free to review :) Hell, even if you don't like it, I guess. Whatever it's too late for this!

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**Sail**

Tony likes to paint. He's never told anybody, and he rarely acts on it, but he does. He likes how the colors will stay away from each other by some invisible line, and he likes it when he could destroy that line with a single stroke of his brush and have the colors meet like lovers. He likes that he can paint whatever the fuck he wants and it won't matter, because artists can do whatever they want. And, hey, he's Iron Man, and he does what he wants. Besides…nobody will see them anyway.

There are those rare nights, though, that he doesn't have any projects left to do, and that little well in his mind that pulls up all of his Stark Industry ideas in a bucket has run dry, and that's just all he wants to do. He just wants to paint. Because the well that thinks of 3D things is but a puddle compared to the ocean of ideas he can paint. It's just…he doesn't want anybody to know. So he turns his ideas into things he can hold. He feels closer to them that way, so why not? Not to mention he can actually show them off.

But tonight…this is one of those nights. The well is dry and the ocean is pouring over the sides of the ship inside of his mind. And he can feel that, maybe, just maybe, the boat will finally sink. And staring tonight he'll just never stop painting, and he'll be able to show them off to the people around him. Because he trusts the people that are around him.

Bruce and Steve, Clint and Natasha, Thor…even Fury and Hill. And if Coulson were here…well, he'd trust him too.

Unbeknown to even Pepper, Tony has a secret walk-in safe in Stark Tower that he can get into via the lab on the floor right below the bottom one. It's three stories (leading down to the arc reactor that powers the tower), all one open space that leads down via ladders because the rooms are so small. They're all of the paintings from Tony's life; needless to say, they barely fill up the bottom of the three floors. Tony is trying to fill it up like the ocean fills up his boat.

"Jarvis," he says, standing in front of the secret door. "Tonight's the night."

"Of course, sir," Jarvis replies politely. He's usually not very polite, but on nights like these he does his very best go go overboard.

The wall begins to whir, and then the door slides open to reveal the first room. It looks like just an empty room at first, because Tony keeps all of the empty canvases and paints on the second floor.

"And will the rules be the same as last time, sir?"

This is the first time Tony's gone to paint with the tower up, but he and Jarvis have had this experience back at his place in California. The rules are not to let anyone in unless Tony is in an absolute emergency in which he is dying or is about to be dying, and Jarvis will tell Tony if anyone is approaching so he can either get back up to his lab or give Jarvis a message to give to them in which they'll be thrown off his scent and leave him alone.

Tony nods once before making his way slowly down the ladder, because he's trying to grasp in his head what all he's actually going to paint. He's going to paint a lot of things. The ship has almost sunk. All of the Avengers, and then there will be one with the three of Fury, H, and Phil.

Tony starts with himself in the Iron Man suit first, because he's textbook narcissistic like that. It takes him the entire night to fill the vertically set canvas, red and gold held apart with an invisible line. And in the background he does a giant arc reactor, peeking out from behind Iron Man like the sun peeking out from behind the mountains. And the parts left untouched by Tony's brush he paints black for the darkness of his place of torture, because he'll never forget that.

When nobody comes for him, Tony washes all of the brushes in the sink on the wall and goes to the next one. This one is Bruce. Just the top half of him, really. It shows about three inches of his pants, but then it just goes up, just like how the canvas is placed vertically. The sleeves of his purple button-up are rolled up to his elbows like a true scientist, and he's looking up at Tony as one of his hands push the glasses back up his nose from where they slid down a little. His salt and pepper hair waves around the top of his head like the waves against Tony's boat, and he does the background green. That's the only indication of the Hulk, because he knows that Bruce doesn't like the "other guy", and he wants him to like it.

Because he really is going to show these to everybody. He really is going to do it.

When he finishes Bruce, Jarvis tells him that it's eight at night. Damn, if it took Tony an entire day and night to paint two of the lesser-detailed Avengers… No, that's great. The boat has sunk. He'll be down here for the rest of the week. He's alright with that.

He washes off his paintbrushes before going back into the lab to use the bathroom and get some coffee, but then he goes right back down.

Steve is next, this canvas set vertically just as the other two. Red, white, blue, and blonde. That's the color scheme for this one. He does it much like he did his own painting, with the shield a giant circle in the background instead of in Steve's hands and black in the extra background. And Steve's perfect blue eyes shimmering out like light blue diamonds (sapphires would be too dark), and his baby blonde hair sticking up just right while his perfect-but-totally-stupid-because-he-always-looks-like-he-just-had-a-kissing-frenzy red-pink lips are slightly parted as he looks off into the distance.

Tony tells Jarvis to stop telling him what time it is after he informs Tony that he spent working on Steve till noon the next morning. That's when Tony washes his brushes, uses the bathroom again, finishes Pepper's three-day-old salad, and then falls asleep on the couch in front of the kitchen still covered in paints.

When he wakes up there's a blanket fluffed out over him, and Steve is asleep on the floor beside the couch. Tony can't help but smile. He fluffs the blanket over Steve and takes a shower, going straight back into his secret three-floor ladder-connected room of paints and canvases.

He decides to paint Clint and Natasha on the same canvas. He wants to change it up a bit and lay the canvas horizontally, but then he wouldn't be able to fit Clint on the way he wants him to. So he just keeps this one vertical too. Tony paints him with his back facing him, his waist bent so that his bow is facing one of his exploding arrows to the left. Natasha is crouched down to the ground, one knee bent and the other sticking out straight as one gloved hand is palm-down to the ground and the other is sticking out like her leg. While Clint's head is facing left, his eyes are rolled down to Natasha, and while Natasha is looking straight ahead, her eyes are rolled up to Clint. In their background he puts in swirls of red and purple smoke melting out over the entire canvas background. Red for Natasha's hair and purple for the faint tinge in Clint's outfit.

So far, this one takes the longest out of all of them thanks to their being two people he has to paint. As always, he cleans the brushes and goes to the bathroom up top and drinks an entire pot of coffee in the kitchen before going to the bathroom again and going back down.

Thor is next, his Shakespearian red drape-cape flaring out behind him as his arm is raised with Mojilnir and the lighting and clouds are swirling around him like the true Asgardian god he is. And he can't forget his long blonde hair blowing about. No, you can't forget that.

And with only a break to clean the brushes, Tony takes his next canvas and sets it up vertically, just like all the others, to start on Loki. He knows that Thor's brother isn't an Avenger—hell, he's as far as he can get—but he paints him anyway. He paints him in a way he's never really seen him before, because he feels like this is…well, it's just a pose that Loki would enjoy. First he paints Loki in a sitting position, ankles crossed and hands up in the air with his palms flat up and his hair falling up in black wisps. That's when he flips it over so that Loki is upside down, and he paints the soft blue couch that he's flipped over on. Instead of the usual green and black leather outfit, he puts him in a lot of black. Tight black pants, black suede boots with laces all the way up to the top, and a black long sleeve. And his bronze/brass/whatever colored helmet is sitting on the couch beside him, and he's seen Loki smile so many times, but somehow none of them seem as real as the one that Tony is making up for him. The other's seemed evil because he was evil, but this one Loki is doing something he's never done before, and somehow that just makes the smile sweet and innocent and a lot more naïve than he probably is.

He does what he does before falling asleep on the couch again, this time waking up with Natasha sitting on his legs (which aren't numb, so it must have been a somewhat recent position) and Clint on the back of the couch with his legs stretched out over Tony so that his heels rest right on the other side of Tony's body.

"Morning," they both say together. They don't look at Tony at all; they just keep watching whatever it is that's on the TV. Natasha does climb up onto the back of couch with Clint, though, and Clint lifts his feet just enough that Tony can roll out and onto the floor.

"Morning," he says back, trudging into the kitchen for coffee and the rest of the eggs that the two master assassins must have cooked up. Then to the bathroom, then down again to his secret room. Nobody questions him. They usually don't, but especially not when he falls asleep on the couch. The only time he ever falls asleep on the couch is when he's working on an intense project or he's so stressed out that forming words isn't even possible for him.

This is his last painting, painted horizontally. Fury stands in the front, both arms behind his back and legs spread apart. Maria goes on his left, legs also spread, but her arms are crossed as her ponytail swishes out behind her and earpiece stretches out to a mouth piece as well. And Phil goes on the right, but Tony doesn't paint him how he remembers him. He paints him…free. Dressed in his usual shoes and black socks and Men In Black sunglasses, but then he puts him in clothes he's never seen and is sure that Phil never had. A yellow and orange floral button-up Hawaiian t-shirt, and nothing but American flag boxers for his pants. He's standing in such a manner than the side closest to Fury is resting on the director's shoulder, the other elbow bent with the hand on his own waist. He's leaning against Fury with a smug sort of smile, one leg straight with the other bent so that the top of his shoe is against the ground instead of the sole. And of course there's the shield symbol behind them all, the eagle spread out in its boring black and white color. That's the SHIELD, though, isn't it? Boring on the outside, Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division on the inside. Long and hard to comprehend.

The longer Tony stares at the painting, the more it gets to him. He's never cried because of his own work before, but he can't help it this time. Because…because Phil. He sinks down onto the floor into a ball, sobbing into his arms. It's been so long since he's cried. He literally cannot remember the last time that he did. And because it's been so long, he can't stop. He cries for everything. His capture and his torture and his nearly dying because of palladium intake and saving the world and being broken up with by Pepper and _Phil fucking Coulson_ being an even better damn hero than Tony could ever be.

"You should not weep over beauty, Tony Stark."

Tony's head snaps up so fast it causes it to crack in a couple of places. And he just stares, because there's Loki, dressed in the same outfit that Tony painted him in, no muzzle/gag/thing over his mouth like there should be. "Did you escape from Asgard?" he asks, doing his best to sound calm. He won't even attempt to look it, considering the tears dripping down his cheeks.

"I was set free," the demigod says, sitting slowly down beside Tony, emerald green eyes shimmering softly. "Time passes different in my realm compared to yours, and I have long spent my sentence."

Tony just swallows.

With the silence, Loki looks around the room, even bending backwards to look down the hole where the ladder is to lead into the bottom floor. "Does anybody else know that you paint?" he asks, leaning back up to look straight into Tony's eyes.

"No," Tony whispers. He can't make any sudden movements, and he certainly can't make a slow run for it. So he'll just play Loki's game. He did that before, he can do it again.

"I disabled your AI's censors," Loki says, eyes training over to the painting of, of course, him. "Is that _me_?"

Tony doesn't answer him. He's more stuck on the fact that Jarvis has no idea that Loki is in here, therefore nobody is coming to rescue him. Shit.

"Why am I upside down?" he asks, crawling over to it. "And, by the Allfather, how did you know about this outfit?"

Tony snaps himself out of his stupor. "I don't know," he says quietly. "It just…it came into my head. I don't know."

Loki crawls around the room, looking over the other ones as well. "The mindless beast…" he whispers, looking at the one of Bruce. "He looks so…normal, here. No giant green rage monsters that caused my spine to go completely numb."

Tony somehow manages a snort, which prompts him to quick wipe his sleeve down his face to dry it.

"And this is the man out of time," he says, looking at the one of Steve. Then to the one of Tony's Iron Man. "These two are very similar. Why did you choose the black background?"

"I did Iron Man first, and the black is…" He trails off. He's barely okay with telling Pepper about it, let alone _Loki_.

But Loki looks at him with big puppy dog eyes that Tony has never seen before, and it doesn't matter that he's the god of lies and mischief and manipulation and all of that. Tony tells him about the capture and the torture and the betrayal and the shrapnel that the arc reactor in his chest is keeping out. "That's what the black represents," he says. "The darkness."

"I think you should have made it an ice yellow," Loki says, looking back with the smallest of smile. "Instead of darkness, it's a light. A sort of…birth, if you will. You wouldn't have any of this if that hadn't happened to you."

Tony blinks at him. It's the same speech he gave to Bruce, back when Loki was in the glass cage.

"Yes, I heard it," he says, completely passing over the painting of Thor and going straight to the one of Clint and Natasha. "I heard everything. Are they together, yet? When I had Barton under my control he told me that he loved her, but she told me that she sees love as something for children. But I am the god of lies, and I saw right through her."

Tony smiles. "I knew it. No, they're still denying all of it."

He crawls back over to Tony, sitting down far too close to him. Dammit, would he just slit Tony's throat already? The suspense is going to kill him before he gets the chance.

But instead he just looks up at the painting still on the canvas, eyes trained on Coulson. "Is that the man I killed?" he asks quietly.

"You killed a lot of people."

"You know what I mean."

"Yes, it's him."

Loki looks over at Tony, eyes piercing into him. "I am sorry."

Tony just blinks at him.

And for some reason, Loki takes this silence as an advantage. He closes the distance between them slowly, lips pressing softly to Tony's. The demigod melds against him, crawling forward until he's in his lap and his legs are straddling Tony's waist.

Tony doesn't know what to do. He's frozen, eyes wide as he doesn't kiss Loki back.

Loki pulls away a moment later, trailing soft kisses across his face. "I'm sorry," he breathes, arms snaking up around Tony's neck. "I'm…so sorry."

When Loki starts kissing him again, Tony kisses him back. He's never kisses a man before, but he finds that it's not unlike kissing a woman. Their lips are still in sync and their bodies are still alive.

And right then, that's when the ship in Tony's mind is sailing again. It sails underwater, the current pushing its sails instead of the air. And Tony knows now that now he'll paint forever, and instead of only making something he can hold to be closer to it, he'll paint it as well. Because Loki is triggering something inside of Tony, and something he can be closer to just won't do anymore.

Now he needs something to remember.

He needs Loki to breathe the current into his lungs. To sail his ship.

_**fin**_


End file.
